


Hate me

by edken



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, I'm so sorry, Johnlock - Freeform, Junkie!Sherlock, M/M, Missing Scenes, Pining Sherlock, Series 3, Songfic, Sort of? - Freeform, The Sign of Three, Unrequited Love, blue october, i dunno i'm rubbish at tags, it's just very sad, major angst, poetry style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:03:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edken/pseuds/edken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John doesn't talk to Sherlock for a month after the wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hate me

**Author's Note:**

> I recommend listening to the song Hate me by Blue October if you haven't. It's amazing and this entire fic is based off of it. Also, very sad feelings ahead. Sorry....

_“Hi, Sherlock. This is John and, er, it’s 2:33 right now on… monday afternoon. Anyway, I was just calling to- well, you left the wedding early. I don’t know, it made me sort of nervous, you just, disappearing like that… nevermind… Let me know  that you’re really okay, because you seemed a bit uptight toward the end there. Just… I’ll be back from my honeymoon in a week, alright? Don’t do anyt-”_

A loud tone cut off the last few words, but I knew what they would be.

_Don’t do anything stupid._

I have listened to this voicemail thirty four times now. Memorized the way your breath hitched between certain words, the sound of Mary calling to you in the background, the nervous crackle of static which indicated a sigh. I don’t particularly like the way the metallic speaker warps your voice. It’s unfamiliar to me. We don’t speak on the phone very often.

It’s been three weeks now, since you left me with this message. You’ve been back in London for two.

You never came around. Haven’t called since.

Then again, neither have I.

I have to block out thoughts of you so I don’t lose my head. It’s more difficult than it should be, to delete things about you. Memories are useless after all, taking up valuable space in my hard drive. I can’t escape them, though. They crawl in like a cockroach, leaving babies wriggling and writhing around, boring holes into my mind as I lie in bed and stare into the dim.

I wait for sleep to come, but it rarely does.

And when it finally arrives I am more often at my desk, or on the kitchen floor. Exhaustion, as it turns out, is the most effective sedative.

Reels of tape play behind closed eyelids, causing a sleep that is not in the least bit restful. I wake up tired, my eyelids even heavier than before and with a new crick in my neck from leaning against the cupboards. I never used to dream, but now they play like home movies as soon as I close my eyes, reminding me that I’m alone.

 _Alone protects me,_ is what I used to say. Now I’m not so sure.

And I often wonder; are you sleeping in your bed, at this very moment while I am in mine? Is Mary curled around you? Is her nose brushing against your shoulder, her small fingers intertwined with yours? Are you dreaming as well?

Are you dreaming of me, while I lie here and dream of you?

Sometimes your touch is so vivid in my subconscious that I jerk awake and can still feel your fingertips scrape against my collarbone, your lips against my mouth. It takes a moment for the image of you, looking down at me with a halo around you from some distant source of light, to fade from my vision and be replaced with the underside of the kitchen table. _Illogical_ , I tell myself, since I have never felt your mouth on mine before, therefor I cannot possibly know what it feels like. _A conjuration of the mind,_ I tell myself as the sensation clears, and my lips are back to the cracked and lonely ones they were before.

Dreams are only fiction with no way of becoming reality. It does no good to indulge them, but I do for a moment, raising tentative fingers to my bottom lip, touching the place you might have touched. Perhaps in another life.

There’s a burning in my pride whenever I come across a thing that reminds me so strongly of you. Things you left behind, or could not take with you when you left. A ridiculous candle you insisted on buying, to "make the flat more homey" you said. I never burn it anymore, for fear the wax will run out and there will be nothing left of it but an empty jar. Somehow that possibility disturbs me, so I leave it on the mantle, untouched. You left your old mug here as well. Probably because Mary must have her own. You wouldn't need another. But now I'm left every morning trying not to touch it as I reach for my own cups, but somehow my knuckles always seem to graze the glass. I hate how cold it feels.

Worst of all was your chair.

Of course you wouldn't bring that with you. Of course you'd leave it covered in dust, across from mine as always. Left to haunt me.

I suppose that's only fair, considering.

After the third week passed and you hadn't called, at 3:26 in the morning, I pushed it up the stairs to your old bedroom. It had to go, because as I curled up against the kitchen cabinets, ready for another night of restful slumber, my eyes had stuck on the back of that chair. Grey dust swirled off of it in the dim light, and somehow it was mesmerizing. Perhaps it was the exhaustion which caused me to reach for my phone, and to dial your number even. My thumb hovered above the call button as my eyes went back to your chair, and for a moment it wasn't so hard to imagine you sitting there again. I can recall with perfect clarity the way you'd pick at the stitching in the arm, rusty red threads you used to distract yourself with when you didn't know what to say. I can very nearly hear your voice, and dangerously my thumb began to descend upon my phone screen, prepared to swallow down my burning pride even if it scalds my throat. Prepared to drop to my knees at your doorstep. Prepared to beg for you not to leave, to _just stay_ in my life even though it's obvious you don't want to.

That's when I threw my phone against the kitchen wall, your name still shining on the screen before it flickered black and clattered to the floor.

I stepped on it with the heel of my shoes on my way to the sitting room, carefully listening for the crunch of metal and glass against tile.

I still don't know how I managed to get your chair up a flight of stairs, but I did it because I don’t have much pride left. I must preserve whatever charred remains still reside in my chest.

3 more days pass without you, and it's fine. It's all fine, as you once said.

It had been a lie then, and it's a lie now.

23 days. A nervous bleeding erupts in my brain whenever I remember the number. How many days it's been since I saw you. _23._ It is the longest I’ve gone without you since I went away. Since I jumped off that rooftop and I saved you, and then spent two years away from you. These 23 days feel like 23 years now, because now I know what it’s like to have John Watson and then lose him.

Peace is all I want for you, John. 

You don’t deserve this.

The remains of my phone are still on the kitchen floor, lifeless and shattered. Broken beyond repair, and somehow it's relieving whenever I have to step over the piled on my way to make tea. Now I needn't wonder, _will you ever call again_? Even if you tried, the call would never reach the ruined bits lying on the floor.

I hate that I can not delete the time you told me you love me. Right here at the table I’m sitting at now. It was disguised, many other words wrapped around it as you asked me to be the best man at your wedding. You said you loved her, and that you loved me. You said that we were the two people you loved most in the world, and I was silent, because I never wanted to hear you say that to me.

Not like this.

I never wanted you to tell me you love me just to put it in my face. Just to continuously remind me that it’s the wrong kind of love.

I wanted you to love me, not to love me _also_.

I will never claim not to be a selfish man.

And as I think about this, I hope you never try to reach me. I hope you never come to Baker Street again. It is I who wanted space, after all. I who pushed you away all those years, all those times I could have had what I wanted but didn’t take it, because I was afraid of what I don’t understand. I turned a blind eye to your elevated pulse and you dilated pupils, I ignored the way your eyes lingered. I repressed my own sentiment that I felt for you.

It is I who wanted space, John.

So the kindest thing you could do for me, is hate me.

Hate me today.

Hate me tomorrow.

Hate me for jumping off that roof. For leaving you alone in the world. It’s a feeling I’ve become quite familiar with. A feeling I’ve grown to ignore, until now. Until your absence tore a gaping hole through me, and I would never wish this intense loneliness on anyone. You should hate me for it, John. You should hate me for not pinning you against the wall kissing you all the times I’ve wanted to. You should hate me for staying silent when I should have screamed at you, told you how I feel. You should hate me ignoring the signs. You should hate me for not holding your hand in times of trouble, or swiping the tears from your cheeks with my thumb when you cried. You should hate me for not being here whenever you fell to the ground, for not holding you, for never telling you that everything was going to to be alright. You should hate me for being wrong. You should hate me for everything I couldn’t do for you. All things I could never be, and never will be.

Hate me for not being what you need.

Hate me for what I’m doing now. Hate me for buying this bag of white powder, and this needle. I can hear your voice in my head now, telling me stop, idiot, and if you die from this don’t expect me to care.  
 ****

I don’t, John.

Hate me, so you can finally see what’s good for you.

But rest assured, you could never hate me as much as I hate myself.

I realize now that you’re just a bit delayed in your reaction time. That you’re not different, just slower in leaving, but you did leave. You are leaving. I give everyone a reason to, eventually. To leave, to give me up for a lost cause. I give everyone a reason and you are no different.

_Goodbye, again._

I plunge the needle into my long abandoned vein, and I feel the cocktail of toxins rush through my bloodstream. And for a moment your fingertips are there, against my forearm, around my wrist, trying to pry the hand away, but only briefly. Soon the syringe is empty and I am left with humming static in my ears, filling my head with gentle stagnation. It’s blissful, to feel so empty.

And you’re finally gone, if just for a little while.

I was sober, until now, for three whole years. It took a few months, when you first came into my life, for the addiction to fade. And when it was gone, I barely noticed. You were my new addiction. I had no need for the old one, so I didn’t miss it. Your high was better, your drug was better. I had an endless supply in the bedroom above my head, in the form of man who once thought I was amazing.

I never thought I’d touch cocaine again.

I suppose that means I was stupid enough to think you’d never leave.

And, in a sick way, I want to thank you for being the replacement for my high. While I was busy waging wars on myself, you were my martyr, trying to stop the fight.

You never doubted my warped opinions on things like death, and heros, and love. Of all things, love. Sentiment. Feelings. You were disappointed, always disappointed, but you never doubted me. Even after I jumped and the whole world told you to, you didn’t. You believed in me, and I never even gave you a good reason to.

I still don’t understand it.  
 ****

And that fact, your unwavering loyalty, is far too much to take anymore. Now that you are gone, and you’re happy with her.

I tell myself that I’m happy for you. Happy that you’ve found the one to make bad things, like the grief of losing me, go away. I tell myself that I’m happy you met her, that she made those two years easier for you, even when there was nobody around to make those two years easier for me. Even though I spent nights with your voice echoing in my head, telling me all my faults, at least you found love in someone else.

Someone who deserves you.

I have always been a good liar, to everyone except myself.

So if I can’t force myself to feel happiness for you, I’ll force myself to feel nothing.

It is unfortunate that I can’t do that without the help of the drugs, but I’m coping.

So I’ll keep myself so far away that I never cross your mind, and I hope that you do whatever it takes in your heart to leave me behind.

Please, John…

Hate me.

For all the hurt that I’ve caused you.

Hate me.

For all the things I never did for you.

Hate me.

So you can finally see what’s good for you.


End file.
